LIVERPOOL STREET STATION

railway station in the northeastern part of the City of London. Lying beside Bishopsgate (street) and the Great Eastern Hotel (1884), it is roughly equidistant between Spitalfields Market (in Tower Hamlets) and Finsbury Circus. The station was opened (1874) where the original Bedlam hospital had stood from the 13th to the 17th century. The station was designed and built to serve the Great Eastern Railway. It is a grandiose Gothic structure, but its size is masked by the location of its platforms below ground level. Enlarged in 1891, it became the most extensive station in London until the enlargement of Victoria Station in 1908. In the late 1980s part of the station was converted for use in the Broadgate office development, which centred on the former (and smaller) Broad Street Station (opened 1865). Liverpool Street Station remains one of the busiest London railway stations.